A Matter of Degrees

[Doug Millison]

> William Karlin wrote:
>The ancients, and medieval folk just were unable to see that the stars
>and their apparent motion were not the absolutes they thought them to be.
>So why not make the measurement system coherent and manageable?

The question is a good one, but ancient astronomers did in fact make
sophisticated observations and measurements of astronomical phenomena,
including the apparent motion of the stars and constellations in the
Precession of the equinoxes; observation of the Precession lies at the
heart of Egyptian religion, according to Jane Sellars in her book The Death
of Gods in Ancient Egypt. Sellars argues that the vast unease caused by the
gradual realization that the stars were not in fact fixed in their paths
lead to the creation of myths, specifically the Isis/Osiris/Seth story (and
its death/rebirth story descendants), to explain it;  her argument about
the re-interpration of the astronomical phenomena into religious myth gets
a bit cranky and tendentious, but the foundation of her argument, that the
ancients did note the Precession, appears to be solid. Sellars believes
that these observations go back to neolithic times, in order to emerge
full-blown in the earliest Egyptian writings. For example, the shift in the
rising of Sirius, of some importance to M&D, "into a position where its
heliacal rising coincided with he Nile's annual flooding" between 4,000 and
3,000 BC, made that star "the harbinger of the inundation."

D O U G  M I L L I S O N ||||||||||| millison at online-journalist.com